TWO STORY-BOOKS4
"LESLIE KEITH" gives us some really good and subtle studies of character in this story. "Cynthia's brother" is, to put the matter briefly, a ne'er-do-weeL People and circumstances • Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. With Introductions and Additions by F. J. Purnivall, HA. Illustrated by Harold Copping. avols. London: R. Tuck and Sons. [22s. 6d. net.] t (1.) Cynthia's Brother. By Leslie Keith. London : R.T.S. 12e. C•c7w, (2.) .A Lion of Wessex. By Tom Bevan. London : S. W. Partridge en“ "'w [3s. 6d.] combine to spoil him. He is an exceedingly naughty and troublesome boy, and when he comes to manhood he gets into finable beside which all the early scrapes are quite insignifi- cant The situation becomes serious, and has to be treated seriously. To this "Leslie Keith" is quite equal. Cynthia has given her heart to a very worthy wooer. If these two had let the prodigal remain among the swines' husks which he has chosen for himself, no one could have blamed them. But Archibald Colquhoun has other conceptions of a friend's duty. He puts aside all that is dear to him, his work in life and his love, for the almost hopeless task of bringing back the wanderer to a better mind. This is worked out very well; the last chapter, in particular, is an excellent bit of work. Only one asks for what readers it is meant, whether for the same as are likely to be satisfied with the pleasant simplicity of the early part of the Amy, If a reader could only grow up along with the characters, nothing could be more suitable. In our very large experience of this kind of literature we have often been conscious of this difficulty. There is a great amount of literary ability expended in the production of these books. The good ones among them—and these are far more numerous than most people would think—are really more pleasant to read than any but the very best of the novels of the day. They are more wholesome; they do not worry us with insoluble problems of life ; they are not bound by the con- vention that a good end is bad art. But they must often fail to find their fitting audience. We hope that Cynthia's Brother—a title which somehow smacks of the nursery—may be more fortunate.
The other book which we have picked out to stand along with "Leslie Keith's" has no claim to subtlety of thought or distinction of style. In fact, its grammar is not always irre- proachable; "he laid low," Mr. Bevan says on one occasion when his hero was hard pressed by some pursuers. But it is a very favourable specimen of the tale of action. Mr. Bevan has chosen the subject of the year, for though the "Lion of Wessex" is not King Alfred himself, he is King Alfred's chosen friend. We do not quite know, indeed, to what part of the great King's life the story belongs. King he had not become, according to the teller of the story, for we hear of King Ethelred as late as chap. 29. On the other hand, we find Alfred telling his mother about the Danish Guthrum's successes in East Anglia, though Guthrnm did not appear upon the stage of English history before the year 875,—i.e., four years after Ethelred's death, Mr. Bevan's chronology is manifestly confused. That, how- ever, matters but little. Dates are easily set right, and setting right is not a bad help for the memory. The merit of the book is the art with which the action is managed. It is easy enough to fill a volume from beginning to end with fighting, but to give variety, to make the scenes of battle seem real, to cause the figures to stand out, as it were, to be stereoscopic rather than photographic, that is an art in which even old hands at this kind of work do not always excel. Mr. Bevan seems to possess it. We venture to say that few readers, old or young, who may take up this volume will lay it down till it is finished.
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